Topic Development
357 questions
A writer is editing a passage about the preservation of the Tudor warship Mary Rose.
In 1982, the hull of the Tudor warship Mary Rose was raised from the Solent seabed, where it had rested since sinking in 1545. Once retrieved, the waterlogged timbers faced the immediate threat of rapid drying and decay. To prevent this, conservators sprayed the hull continuously with cold freshwater, followed by a mist of polyethylene glycol (PEG), a water-soluble wax that gradually replaced the water in the wood cells. [1] This painstaking process took decades, concluding only in 2013 when the ship was finally allowed to dry under controlled conditions. Today, the ship is housed in a museum in Portsmouth, attracting thousands of visitors annually.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence to the paragraph at Point [1]:
"Polyethylene glycol is also commonly used as an additive in cosmetics, toothpastes, and various pharmaceutical products."
Should the writer make this addition?
A writer is editing a passage about the history of the neon sign and has drafted the following paragraph:
In 1910, French engineer Georges Claude introduced the first neon lamp to the public at the Paris Motor Show. Claude had discovered that passing an electrical current through sealed glass tubes containing neon gas produced a bright, glowing red light. [1] Seeking to commercialize his invention, Claude founded a company called Claude Neon to sell these vibrant tubes for advertising. By the 1920s, neon signs had crossed the Atlantic, transforming the nightscapes of American cities like Los Angeles and New York with their electric glow.
At Point [1], the writer is considering adding the following sentence:
"Neon is a noble gas, which means it is colorless, odorless, and highly unreactive under normal conditions."
Should the writer make this addition?
Passage Excerpt:
In 2009, chemist Mas Subramanian and his team at Oregon State University were researching materials for electronics applications. While heating manganese oxide along with other chemicals to high temperatures, they accidentally created a brilliant, durable new pigment: YInMn Blue. Chemists had long sought a blue pigment that was both stable and non-toxic, [X]
The writer wants to emphasize the safety benefits of YInMn Blue by contrasting it with the specific chemical hazards of traditional blue pigments. Given that all the choices are true, which one best accomplishes this goal?
A writer is editing an essay about early bridge engineering and has drafted the following paragraph:
James Finley, a judge in Pennsylvania, revolutionized transportation in by building the first modern suspension bridge. Finley utilized iron chains to support a level wooden deck, allowing heavy carriages to cross Jacob's Creek safely. Prior to Finley's design, suspension bridges were constructed from rope or vines, which dipped significantly in the center and were highly unstable in strong winds. Finley patented his design in , and he went on to write several influential pamphlets describing the structural engineering principles behind his bridge.
Should the writer keep or delete the underlined sentence?
Passage Excerpt:
In 1885, Wilson Bentley, a farmer from Vermont, became the first person to photograph a single snowflake. Bentley accomplished this by attaching a microscope to his bellows camera. [X] Over his lifetime, he captured more than five thousand images of snowflakes, proving that no two are identical.
At this point in the passage, the writer wants to add a sentence that emphasizes the painstaking care and physical discomfort Bentley endured to capture his images. Which choice best accomplishes this goal?
A writer is editing a passage about the history of industrial chemistry and has drafted the following paragraph:
In 1856, eighteen-year-old chemist William Henry Perkin was attempting to synthesize quinine, a treatment for malaria, in his home laboratory. Instead of obtaining a clear drug, he produced a dark, sticky sludge. Cleaning his flask with alcohol, Perkin noticed that the mixture turned a vibrant, deep purple. [1] Perkin had accidentally created mauveine, the world’s first synthetic aniline dye. This new substance revolutionized the textile industry and birthed the modern chemical industry.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence at Point [1]:
"At the time, purple dye was traditionally extracted from sea snails, making it so expensive that only royalty could afford it."
Should the writer make this addition?
Passage Excerpt:
In the early nineteenth century, a Cherokee silversmith named Sequoyah became convinced that written language was the key to his people's independence. Over the course of a decade, he painstakingly designed a system of eighty-five characters representing the syllables of the spoken Cherokee language. His invention allowed Cherokee speakers to achieve literacy rapidly, leading to the establishment of the first Native American newspaper, *The Cherokee Phoenix*, in 1828.
Given that all the choices are grammatically correct, which choice most clearly and vividly emphasizes the widespread and immediate adoption of Sequoyah's system by the Cherokee community?
Passage Excerpt:
In the summer of 1967, postgraduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell [1] from a new radio telescope she had helped build. Among the miles of data, she noticed a strange "scruff"—a series of repeating radio pulses that occurred every 1.33 seconds. Although some of her colleagues initially wondered if the signals came from an extraterrestrial civilization, Bell Burnell and her advisor soon realized they had discovered a rapidly spinning neutron star, later named a pulsar.
Which choice most effectively emphasizes the tedious, labor-intensive nature of Bell Burnell's work in analyzing the telescope's output?
A writer is editing a passage about the history of American baking. Read the following paragraph:
In 1938, Ruth Wakefield, co-owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, made a culinary breakthrough that would redefine American desserts. While preparing a batch of chocolate cookies, she ran out of baker's chocolate and instead chopped up a block of semi-sweet chocolate, expecting it to melt and disperse throughout the dough. [1] Instead, the chocolate pieces held their shape, creating the very first chocolate chip cookies. The recipe, which she called the 'Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie,' quickly became a national sensation.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence at point [1]:
'The Toll House Inn, originally built as a toll booth in 1709, had been a popular spot for travelers to change horses and rest.'
Should the writer make this addition?
A writer is editing a passage about the invention of the windshield wiper and has drafted the following paragraph:
During a freezing trolley ride in New York City in 1902, Mary Anderson observed that the motorman had to keep the front window panes open to wipe away the accumulating sleet. Upon returning home to Alabama, Anderson sketched a design for a hand-operated blade that could clear a windshield from inside the vehicle. [1] In 1903, she was awarded a patent for her window-cleaning device, though many people initially doubted its safety, fearing it would distract drivers. Today, automatic wipers are a standard feature in virtually every automobile.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence at Point [1]:
Alabama is known for its humid subtropical climate and mild winters.
Should the writer make this addition?
A writer is editing a passage about the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone.
[1] In 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion made a breakthrough in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, an ancient slab of black granodiorite. [2] The stone, discovered in 1799, featured a single decree written in three scripts: hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Ancient Greek. [3] By comparing the Greek text, which scholars could already read, with the mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphs, Champollion began to map out the phonetic sounds of the ancient characters. [4] He worked diligently in a small Paris study, often ignoring his failing health to translate long passages late into the night. [5] Eventually, this comparative analysis allowed him to reconstruct the alphabet used by the scribes, unlocking centuries of Egyptian history.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence to the paragraph (placed after Sentence 3):
Ancient Greek was widely spoken and used for administrative purposes throughout the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period.
Should the writer make this addition?
A writer is editing a passage about the development of the Braille writing system. Read the following paragraph:
Louis Braille was only fifteen years old in 1824 when he developed his tactile writing system for the visually impaired. Inspired by a military code of "night writing" created by Charles Barbier, Braille reduced Barbier's complex twelve-dot grid to a more manageable six-dot cell. [1] This modification allowed readers to recognize an entire character with a single touch of a fingertip, dramatically increasing reading speed. Braille's system eventually became the global standard, opening up new educational and professional opportunities for millions.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence at point [1]:
"Barbier was a captain in the French Army who also designed several other code systems for military use."
Should the writer make this addition?
A writer is editing an essay about historical agricultural science and has drafted the following paragraph:
Russian botanist Nikolay Vavilov dedicated his life to ending famine by gathering seeds from crop wild relatives across five continents. By the 1930s, he had established the world’s largest seed collection in Leningrad. During the devastating 872-day Siege of Leningrad in World War II, Vavilov's assistants chose to starve to death rather than eat the unique samples of rice, wheat, and potatoes they protected. Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago, now houses a global seed vault designed to withstand natural and man-made disasters. Ultimately, the scientists' sacrifice ensured the preservation of vital genetic plant diversity that helped restore agriculture after the war.
The writer is considering deleting the underlined sentence. Should the sentence be kept or deleted?
Safeguarding the Future: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
[1]
Deep inside a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Often referred to as the "Doomsday Vault," this facility is designed to withstand both natural and man-made disasters. It serves as a safety net for the world's agricultural heritage, protecting millions of seed samples from around the globe against accidental loss in traditional genebanks.
[2]
The vault's location was chosen with meticulous care. Svalbard is geologically stable, reducing the risk of earthquakes. Furthermore, its extreme northern latitude offers natural permafrost, which helps keep the seeds frozen even if the facility's mechanical cooling systems fail. The seeds are stored at a constant temperature of minus eighteen degrees Celsius. Wrapped in moisture-resistant foil packages and placed in sealed boxes, the seeds are shielded from moisture and oxygen, ensuring their viability for decades or even centuries.
[3]
While local genebanks exist in almost every country, they are vulnerable to war, political instability, and natural disasters. For example, during the Syrian Civil War, researchers at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Aleppo were forced to abandon their facility. Fortunately, because they had previously deposited duplicates of their seed collection in the Svalbard vault, they were able to retrieve the seeds and re-establish their operations in Lebanon and Morocco. This real-world test demonstrated the indispensable role of the vault in global food security.
Suppose the writer's goal had been to write an essay that describes the construction challenges and architectural engineering details of building the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Would this essay successfully accomplish this goal?
During World War II, Bletchley Park served as the central site for British codebreaking, where cryptanalysts worked tirelessly to decipher enemy communications. The intelligence produced here, codenamed Ultra, provided crucial support to the Allied war effort by revealing enemy troop movements. The codebreakers achieved success not through a single breakthrough, but through a combination of mathematical theory, technological innovation, and sheer persistence. To assist in this massive effort, the British government recruited individuals from a wide variety of intellectual backgrounds.
Given that all the choices are true, which one provides the most specific, concrete details to support the claim that the recruited individuals came from diverse intellectual backgrounds?
Smeaton's Tower and the Rebirth of Concrete
[1] In 1756, the Eddystone Rocks, a treacherous reef off the coast of Devon, England, presented a notorious danger to maritime navigation. Two successive wooden lighthouses built on the site had already been destroyed—one swept away by a ferocious storm, and the other consumed by fire. Recognizing that wood was insufficient to withstand the relentless force of the Atlantic, the English engineer John Smeaton resolved to build a structure entirely of stone.
[2] Smeaton’s design was revolutionary. He modeled the lighthouse's shape on the trunk of an oak tree, tapering upward to distribute the impact of waves. Rather than relying on simple gravity to hold the granite blocks in place, Smeaton pioneered a system of interlocking dovetail joints, effectively binding the stones into a single, cohesive monolith. Yet, his most enduring contribution was not the shape of the tower, but the mortar that held it together.
[3] At the time, standard mortar dissolved in water. To find a mixture that would cure under water, Smeaton embarked on a series of rigorous experiments with different compositions of lime and clay. He discovered that lime containing a high proportion of clay produced a cement that was hydraulic—meaning it would set and harden even when completely submerged. This breakthrough revived a technology lost since the fall of the Roman Empire: hydraulic concrete. Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse stood for over a century, proving the viability of hydraulic mortar and paving the way for modern civil engineering.
Suppose the writer's goal had been to write an essay that chronicles the history of lighthouse construction in England from the seventeenth century to the modern era. Would this essay fulfill that goal?
A writer is editing a passage about Mesoamerican history and has drafted the following paragraph:
Tatiana Proskouriakoff, an architect by training, revolutionized Mesoamerican archaeology in the mid-twentieth century through her meticulous drawings of ancient monuments. Working at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, she analyzed the dates inscribed on stelae—carved stone slabs—at the ruins of Piedras Negras. Rather than viewing the carvings as abstract astrological charts or depictions of mythical gods, Proskouriakoff proposed a groundbreaking theory: the monuments recorded the actual historical biographies of Mayan rulers. She noticed that the lifespan patterns of the recorded dates matched the average lifespans of human beings. Consequently, she hypothesized that the glyphs documented births, accessions to the throne, and deaths of real monarchs.
The writer is considering adding the following sentence to the end of the paragraph:
'Hieroglyphs were also carved into smaller jade ornaments and pottery found in Mayan tombs.'
Should the writer make this addition?